There is a feeling of bubbles forming from my chest
that threatens to spill from my mouth,
but instead, flowers grow out of my throat
and reach upwards to the never-ending sky.

There is no way to know how I feel,
as I do not know myself what goes on
in my body, in my head --
I am but a passenger as my form works on autopilot
interacting, recharging, moving.

There is a dull pain, sometimes --
a hollow kind of loneliness that spreads like miasma,
bone-deep and cold to the touch.
On those days I'm anchored
to the bed, to the ground.
My mind knows there is nothing keeping me down,
yet my body refuses to believe it.

There is a screaming in my head
that I wasn't aware of
until I started smoking, until
the nicotine had suddenly
muted everything going on up there.

When you live in a void of white noise,
silence is what you seek.
But there is no fixed price,
no settled equivalent on what you stand to lose
for you to gain.